1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an original reader apparatus which reads an original image while the original passes over a reading position, and stores image data corresponding to this reading in storing means.
2. Description of the Related Art
Sorting in known photocopiers has been performed by causing the original document to be passed through repeated cycling for photocopying onto output paper, which has been a cause of damage to the original document.
In order to deal with such a situation, an electronic sorter has been proposed. Such an electronic sorter uses memory which accumulates image data. Such memory has used either a low-speed large-capacity hard disk or a high-speed low-capacity semiconductor memory, wherein limitations in accumulation speed or accumulation capacity caused long periods of waiting for the image to be input, or input thereof being disabled for long periods of time. Also, various types of job scheduling have been proposed, wherein users bringing original documents to the digital photocopier proper would be given priority. However, in accordance with the present large-capacity photocopying area and large-volume outputting from PCs, spontaneous response and improvement in processing speed is being required.
This improvement in spontaneous response and improvement in processing speed is being dealt with by means of using large-capacity semiconductor memory. However, there are limitations to the accumulation capacity of such large-capacity semiconductor memory, and control of the equipment at this accumulation capacity limit has been problematic.
Also, in the event that such an accumulation capacity limitation occurs, continuous reading of original documents becomes impossible, so there is the necessity to have intervals between reading of the original documents. However, leaving the original exposure lamp on not only wastes electricity, but with original reading apparatuses arranged such that the original documents are fed and read at high speeds, the temperature in the immediate vicinity of the lamp fixed for passing documents over and reading suddenly rises, and this has been problematic from the point of overheating prevention, as well.